Persuasive Learning Design through Context Engineering.

Carl SmithLearning Technology Research Institute (LTRI),

London Metropolitan University.CARL.SMITH@LONDONMET.AC.UK

Valentina ChinniciLearning Technology Research Institute (LTRI),

London Metropolitan University.Università degli Studi di Roma Tre,

VAL.CHINNICI@STUD.UNIROMA3.IT

EuroPlot has focused on extending PLOTMaker by adding new components, persuasive learning patterns, a mobile player and learner journey manager. This new authoring environment enables teachers, trainers and students in industry and educational institutions to rapidly create pedagogically based contextual mobile learning apps. The authoring environment structures these apps methodologically to allow for the exploration of the inherent relationships between the learning content and the context of that content.

Keywords: Mobile Learning, Persuasive Learning, PLOTMaker, Learning Context.

IntroductionPLOTMaker is designed to support the aims of the EuroPlot project by giving teachers, trainers and students the tools necessary to create and adapt effective learning resources. PLOTMaker has been extended on the basis that the persuasiveness of a learning design is not dependent on the technology itself, but on how the technology is applied within a given context:

1. PLOTMaker as context engineering tool: Recent research is beginning to show that fluidity of thinking and learning relates to fluidity of movement. As a result of this persuasive principle the new version of PLOTMaker enables teachers, trainers and students to dynamically manipulate elements of the learning context. This is achieved by exploring the generation of 'meaning' in the physical environment and the inherent relationship between learning content and the context of that content.

2. PLOTMaker as mobile app maker: The new version of PLOTMaker enables teachers, trainers and students to rapidly create pedagogically based mobile learning apps in an intuitive and easy way. The persuasive power of this development will be explored with an example from the Kai Munk case study (figure 1+2) where students will capture their learning experience in situ using the mobile PLOTMaker player and then feed that content back into the PLOTMaker environment for novel reflection and interrogation of their learning.

Background

PLOTMaker has a wide international user base with 18,198 visitors having made 27,331 visits to the website in 2012 alone and from 129 different countries. There have also been 5,024 PLOTMaker downloads in the same time period.

The WYSIWYG authoring tool provides powerful features with an easy-to-use interface. It is open source and free for educational use. The PLOTMaker tool currently works on computers, tablets and mobile phones and allows users to overlay digital sight, sounds and interactions onto the physical world in order to create rich immersive and interactive experiences. Users equipped with a mobile device running the PLOTMaker mobile player can move through the physical world and trigger digital media interventions in response to physical events such as location, proximity, time and movement.

In addition to being used to create and then repurpose learning resources in four subject areas within the EuroPlot project (archival studies, language learning, environmental science and business computing) it has been used to develop and deliver a wide range of learning resources in a number of projects funded by bodies such as JISC, FDF (Foundation Degrees Forward) and many UK Universities.

Case Studies

1. Kai Munk

Figure 1: EuroPlot Kai Munk case study

PLOTMaker is being used to develop resources for problem-based learning for adult learners and school children around the Kaj Munk archive and will work with the Kaj Munk Research Center and the Kaj Munk Museum in Vedersø.

Figure 2: The Kai Munk Learner Journey Interface

2. Rylands Greek papyrus

(http://www.glomaker.org/samples/Papyrus12/GLO_Player.html) This example PLOT focuses on Rylands Greek papyrus and uses the PLOT access views component (see figure 3). The access views component is effectively a tool within a tool that is used (in this instance) to explore a variety of interpretations of a single artefact from three different disciplinary perspectives (History, Papyrology - study of papyrus documents, and Museum Studies). The objective is to promote an appreciation of the insights about the item and its wider historical context by considering an object from more than one disciplinary perspective.

Figure 3: Rylands Greek papyrus Access views component.

3. Ravensbourne Induction Trail

The Ravensbourne Induction Trail is an interactive location-based media experience designed by students for (the new intake of) students at Ravensbourne University. This process of co-creation was encouraged through the PLOTMaker architecture - ice-breakering and team building activities were triggered via the PLOTs in order to combine personal with environmental experiences.

Using the PLOTMaker tool, and consequently the PLOTmaker player, the learners and their teams are guided into different reflective challenges and are asked to re-conceptualize them by recording short videos expressing their point of view, their strengths as a team, and show their decision making and problem solving skills. The Induction Trail consists of six PLOTs, each of which is connected to an area of the building and specific topic and activity.

The learners have to discover the environment and become an active part in the process of knowledge construction. The entire experience is learner-centered. As a result the members of this “Community of practice” (Wenger, 2006) actually (co)produce the resources which can in turn usefully be shared with other communities (Ryberg, 2008)

According to pedagogical constructivism the students enhance their personal potential developmental level through their independent problem solving activities. Rather than taking place under adult guidance these activities are actually mentored by the tasks suggested by the PLOT, and supported through collaboration with each other (Vygotsky, 1978).

Following the simple activities designed for the learner, this process of technology-based learning becomes a social process of collaborative knowledge building (Brown & Campione, 1994; Lave, 1991; Pea, 1993a; Scardamalia & Bereiter, 1996)1 for the creation of cultural artefacts (Stahl, 2005) and learner creativity. During the induction trail the learners will use not only the PLOTmaker player, but they will be encouraged to use other “social” platform, such as Instagram and Twitter to generate their personal content and challenge other teams.

1. Scavenger hunt: photo challengeThe “Scavenger hunt: photo challenge” (see figure 4) is an ice-breaker and team building activity which uses the PLOT as a guide for understanding the different courses offered at Ravensbourne University. Instead of the traditional “scavenger hunt” they have to use their devices socially, tagging their content via Twitter.

All the content is then available not only for the team that created it, but also for all the other members of the other teams and in general for all the Twitter and Instagram users. The objective is to create a new form of knowledge based on the personal experience of different learners, that spreads over the social networks through creative activities, in a collaborative social environment.

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Figure 4: Scavenger Hunt: photo challenge

2. Central Loan Resources

The “Central Loan Resources” is the place where the equipment of Ravensbourne university is borrowed. In this case we have created a memory game (see figure 5) to let the students familiarise with all distinctive equipment from different fields of study. In order to create a more interactive experience we have used the 360 degrees panorama feature. The students could be able to interact actively with the environment and discover the equipment moving into the room (see figure 6). For this activity the social use of Instagram and Twitter is required.

Figure 5: CLR activity explained

Figure 6: CLR 360 degrees panorama

4. Urban Education and Language Learning.

The final case study focuses on the design, implementation and evaluation of a location based, context aware system for urban education. The initial design was iteratively adapted using evolutionary prototyping for language learning.

The Urban Education tour is based on a small area known as Eden Grove close to London Metropolitan University and it explores how schools from 1850 to the present day are signifiers of both urban change and continuity of educational policy and practice. The theoretical perspective was to allow collaborating learners to interact: with each other, with the mobile phones and with the physical environment in order to generate their own context for development within a Zone of Proximal Development.

Iteration 1: Urban Education

The tour was developed using the initial design outlined above in conjunction with a complex interplay between mobile learning technologies, iconic physical infrastructures and educational discourses. The aim was to visualise urban education through various collective images and representations (cf: Durkheim’s notion of the social imaginaire). This was intended to enable researchers in both formal and informal learning contexts, when combined with the real, to examine past and present representations of urban form, and relate these to a contemporary Iteration of urban education (Pratt-Adams, Maguire and Burn, 2010). The overall intention was to create a digital ‘technoscape’ (Appadurai, 1996; Urry, 2006) to represent urban land, space, and subjects using a combination of social and cultural scripts. These included oral histories, local historical stories, and material elements that detail changes in the urban form, such as old photographs of pupils, school buildings and historical maps. The aim was for the researcher to move through the re-constructed landscape and thus “perform that landscape” (Sheller and Urry 2006, p. 9).

The development and production process involved the following elements:

• Initial field work and documentation of the site;• Capture and digitisation of oral histories, Pathe news clips and local historical stories;• Capture and digitisation of material elements that detail changes in the urban form, such as photographs depicting the evolution of school buildings and historical maps;• PLOT production to support the underlying pedagogy of the tour.

The cameras on the smart phones were used to allow students to produce video podcasts of themselves and take photos. This instant capture of report writing and note making in situ was designed to promote real time reflection. Images captured with the phones were automatically geo-spatially tagged with their location information using GPS. These smart phones are also capable of instant upload of data to sites like Flickr. Finally QTVR (quicktime VR) movies of the interiors of the structures under investigation can be viewed and manipulated in real time on location (as access to the interiors was not available during the fieldwork).

Users running the PLOTMaker player on a mobile device can move through the physical world and trigger digital media with GPS via an invisible interactive map. Zones are initially set up on a map which has been geo-referenced to the physical site. The training starts with minimal instruction for the user. The intention is that whilst the technology (GPS) is working behind the scenes the content is very much at the forefront in order to minimise any technical concerns. Once they have entered a zone, audio and textual instructions are automatically triggered to the mobile device.

Some examples of the varied learning activities involved in the application include a section where the user is asked to examine both the physical architecture and the virtual architecture in the same physical location. The virtual architecture in this instance includes areas which were not available to view on the day of the tour and visualizations of the building as it was in the late 19th century. The user is then asked to examine what the building was originally used for when it was established in 1870. The user also has the opportunity to listen to the oral history of a former pupil at the school and adopt their point of view whilst in the same physical space where the events took place. The user can reinvest the insight gained back into the context and augment the space.

In another section the user is asked to look at a newsreel of a religious procession from the 1930s that was filmed in Eden Grove whilst they are standing in the same location where the film was shot. The students can reflect on the significance of religion (in this case Roman Catholicism) on the locale and its influence on schooling.

In the 1920’s this area was known as the Ring Cross Estate and was in the second highest criterion for overcrowding and squalor, with people living in some of the worst slums. During the middle of the 20th Century, the area was part of a slum clearance programme. Conditions improved throughout the 1970’s. The user is shown these street scenes and asked to approximate by physically sketching out how much of the area in the archive footage still remains and how much of it has been redesigned. The student is encouraged to reflect on the impact of the social conditions on educational standards.

The final section exposes the user to the differing architectural styles of the buildings. The user is introduced to a traditional Victorian 3-decker style school design (where the hall is located at the centre with classrooms coming off a central point) and asked to compare it to the more recent open style designs where each classroom is given some access to the playground. The central activity is to examine what the architecture suggests about the educational approaches of the time.

Iteration 2: Language Learning

The aim of this iteration of the design was the realisation from the previous instances shown above that the way information is spatially represented directly impacts on our cognition. “In the everyday world, humans organise and manipulate objects in space to facilitate thinking. We are constantly organising and reorganising space to enhance performance” (Kirsch, 1995). All forms of media use some level of spatial arrangement to organise information.

Computer-assisted language learning (CALL) has embraced virtual learning environments such as Second Life but using actual physical structures as a means of scaffolding language learning has not yet been explored. The method of loci was adopted by ancient orators in order to remember and organise speeches using a combination of visual memory and location (Yates, 92).

“The problem of seeing and retaining complex information is older than print…. The principle ancient mnemonic device was called ‘The Method of Loci’ and places its emphasis on memorability (via intelligibility and transparency) through visual structures such as concept maps. It is very much concerned with the acquisition of new knowledge. It plays upon methods that we use informally, and it is a tradition that survives today …..Visualization was in itself an important method of theory building. It may have been more important than text.” (Won, J. Storkerson, P. 1996)

So would our pre-existing spatial design act as a catalyst and activate the abilities of language learners if carried out in situ? The tour was translated into four languages: German, Spanish, Italian and French but the content remained exactly the same. The users were tested in the classroom using this content as text only and then in situ using our design.

Although we accept that our description above is brief, we point out that reusing another iteration of our design here for language learning was very easy and quick to achieve, something that we see as a pointer to the generality of our approach. In the future research section we will explore ideas for extending the Language Learning design.

Social Media

A potential way of extending the urban education project is to incorporate the dynamic use of real time social data. We become part of a larger social identity through passing around ideas. We spread ideas around through dialogue and other forms of interaction. They become ‘contagious patterns of cultural information that pass from meme to meme which in turn have the ability to change the actions of a group’ (Dawkins, 1976). A meme is a basic unit of cultural ideas, social semiotic symbols or practices, which can be transmitted from one mind to another via texts or speech, etc.

Learning interventions can now harness the power and potential utility of the wider social network. If we can spread ideas bi-directionally through these cultural networks in real time then we can harness instant feedback and reuse. This will help create what can be termed mobile meme machines (http://mememachine.com/). Application Program Interfaces (API’s) exist for Twitter and Facebook which will make it easy to talk to Augmented Reality (AR) browsers in real time. Students should be able to share and critique their ideas on urban or school design both in situ and in reflection.

Metadata could then potentially be gathered in real time via these social networks and used to capture the meaning and sense-making process in learning. All kinds of annotations, classifications, discussions, usage information, and references can then be added as an extra layer on top of the content information. This metadata can be used to enable users to find all kinds of new media for instruction and learning (and potentially keep their Zone of Proximal Development on display). Metadata in this sense is closely related and can be fed into the core processes of learning as reflection, guidance, and feedback (Specht, 2009).

During the urban planning studies students learnt that the physical design of any educational institution has a direct impact on the delivery of the education that takes place within that context. Learning space design shapes our behaviour and influences our thinking. As a result, a way of extending that understanding is to get the learner to participate in the design of that context in order to control how their learning environment operates.

The idea of this application of the system is for urban designers working in pairs to use simple open source 3D software (i.e Google sketch up http://sketchup.google.com/ or blender http://www.blender.org/) to create basic additions or revisions to current school designs (in the form of 3D sketches). This is a useful way to give students the opportunity to highlight the areas of their institutions that in their opinion lead to negative effects on their learning.

In order to test the validity of the findings a virtual version of the application will be created which will be used by individuals only. This will involve individuals using the recently available Google Earth API (http://code.google.com/apis/earth/). In essence, instead of placing their 3D models and annotations into real space they will enter them into virtual space, via the AR application. This data will then be compared to examine how significant the world as a platform is in this scenario.

Augmented Reality

Another way of extending the project is to build an Augmented Reality (AR) version of the tour. AR specifically generates composite views using the real scene viewed by the user and a virtual scene generated by the computer. The key aspect of AR is that the virtual elements enhance the person's perception of the world by supplying relevant information that is not contained in the real world.

AR is more powerful than VR as its influence is bi directional. “If we consider AR as a visualisation technique, the relationship of real and virtual objects is one of focus and context: Either we want to provide additional virtual context to an important object in the real world or we want the user to focus on a virtual object embedded in a real context” (Kalkofen et al, 2009). The learner in an AR environment can locate points of interest (POI) which have been pre-embedded into the scene or they can place (and eventually activate) their own POI into the scene in real-time.

The construction of psychological and physical space is one of the constituent parts in the generation of context. MAR (Mobile Augmented Reality) systems have been referred to as “intelligence amplifying systems to enhance human cognitive activities, such as attention, planning, and decision making” (Brooks, 1995).

AR crucially provides both the direct primary experience (the real world scene) and the mediated representation (the digital augmentation). As a result Augmented Reality (AR) provides significant support for real time situated learning. Practice and theory can now feed off each other in the same space. A good example of this is an engineer working on an engine whilst wearing glasses that provide a digital overlay showing the potential areas which could be responsible for a known problem. The theory informs the practice in the same space.

Extending the Language Learning project

A lot of virtual media is often accused of isolating learners from reality but augmented-reality has the opportunity to draw learners further into reality by amplifying the already existing authentic context. The inherent high resolution nature of real life must be taken advantage of in order to enhance learning. Language is fundamentally about the local context. As a result the classroom is arguably not the most efficient environment for enhancing and assessing language performance. Through acquiring a language in context you acquire a culture. Authentic cultural language should directly mesh with authentic cultural situations.

As highlighted by Vygotsky’s Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD), maintaining successful immersion in language learning depends on working at a level just above the comprehensible level of the student. An average teacher has many students with differing levels of ability in their language skills, and as a result, personalized immersion instruction is almost impossible to apply.

Augmented Reality in this context provides an excellent vehicle for immersive and dynamic language learning. Adding extra information onto the surrounding environment is the core function of Augmented Reality. A language learner is supplied with the ability to acquire a language whilst being augmented within their authentic environments. Learners can see local people having conversations in the target language and real objects being labeled dynamically. Preference settings could easily tailor the method to the individual level of ability ensuring the learners remain within their ZPD.

Conclusion

The PLOTMaker is a versatile pedagogical tool where generated digital learning content can be customised, adapted and edited for different learning purposes across a big range of topics and disciplines.

Not only can teachers create content for students but also students can create content for other students. This digital mentorship becomes a playful tool in the learning process. PLOTs can be used alongside any other app running on the device to create effective ‘context augmentation’ within a wide range of learner-centered experiences and possibilities. The students can, for instance, create their own educational journey with the additional support of Augmented Reality apps. Students can also create PLOTs dedicated to documenting the process of creation of their projects.

Students can create engaging activities using their own original content based on the topics they are interested in and instantly share them with their peers for iterative feedback. The PLOTMaker authoring tool gives teachers and students a different approach to knowledge construction. The pedagogical tasks can be chosen by the students, in an immersive ubiquitous environment that can be discussed and enhanced through the use of social media (i.e. Twitter or Facebook).

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